MUMBAI: Bringing relief to thousands of paper delivery vendors across the city, lake-city based Sachin Salunkhe (47) has come up with a mobile application, which with help them recover their daily investments in time and at the click of a button.

This free application called Paper Man Smart Billing, not only facilitates these vendors with automatic recording of the bills of their never-ending list of customers, but also allows you to pay your newspaper bills online.

For around 27 years, Salunkhe, a Vartak Nagar who worked in proximity to the 15000 odd newspaper vendors in Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad, often heard them complaining about their customers refusing to pay bills citing miscalculations, lack of change and so on.

He then decided to create an app, for this small community which ensures that citizens have their preferred paper or magazine at your doorstep right in time for breakfast.

“Newspaper vendors, just like our dabbawalas, work in an efficient, organized and timely fashion, bring citizens’ this breakfast time necessity within three hours of it being printed. They have to pay each newspaper and magazine company in advance for this 50lac copies a day, and wait to be reimbursed for it at month end. However, their payments often reach them towards the end of the second month. Many a times, customers refuse to pay them due to a range of misunderstandings,” Salunkhe said.

Explaining the function of this mobile application, he added, “My aim was to bring transparency in this system, and I thus struck upon this idea of a billing app. Any vendor can download this free app, which automatically bills the customer on a daily basis, and accumulates in time for payment at the end of the month. The delivery boy documents every delivery as soon as it is done. The day before the payment, the customer gets an SMS and an email informing them about the detailed bill. They have to keep the money ready, or can also pay online, thus ensuring that the vendor gets him income in time.”

Salunkhe, who came up with this innovation in December, then organized a trial run with a few local vendors, and after a number of error checks launched it on Wednesday. The app has already helped members of this 15000 strong community.

Sushil Mehta, a Naupada based vendor who became a part of the trial round a month ago, said, “Delivering papers and magazine quickly is a very hectic job. However, sitting later to collate each person’s bill is far more tiresome. Many often don’t pay because they claim that the calculation is wrong or say that they don’t have change. We have to feed our families with what we get after paying off all the delivery boys. This system informs then of the detailed bill a day in advance, making collection of our money very easy.”

“The online payment option in the app is yet another plus point. If people claim they don’t have change, we ask them to pay online. 50 of my customers opt for the online payment option now. Additionally, the app has a separate option for customers living on rent. We charge these customers a deposit as there are many renters who shift homes without paying us. There are many renters on my Majiwada route,” said Ajit Patil, a vendor who has a stall at Nitin Company junction and runs a paper route in Majiwada.

The vendors, however, will have to go through a registration process to download the app.

“We will approach each of the 15000 vendors in Mumbai unit (Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, Raigad) to ensure there are no duplicate accounts. After a security check we will install the app in their phone which will give them access only to their line of customers. They will be given a login and password, which they can share with their customers, making access to the status of bill (pending and paid) easy for both. This process ensures that confidential addresses and contacts of customers are not revealed to all playstore users” Salunkhe said.

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